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Show Ghost of Latvia Recalls Memories of Better Days By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator WASHINGTON At the end of one of those few pleasant aummer days which Washington gives us, I was walking homeward from a mission in a part of town which I hadn't visited recently. I found myself in a neighborhood which seemed to produce a slightly nostalgic feeling. The street took a quick up-turn and, for a short block, was quite steep. Most ol the houses were new but there was one with a colored glass window such as graced many a home that I visited as a child. Such windows win-dows were usually on the staircase landing, at the turn, and when the sun shone through them it tossed a handful of jewels on the carpet. I always wanted to pick them up. That, I thought as I walked along, is nostalgic childhood memories. But I was wrong. Soon I realized1 that the memory which the stained glass window evoked was much more recent. But it did stir ghosts, the ghost of a man and the ghost of a nation, for there is no reason why dead nations, which really never quite died, must not live on in some form. And Washington is not without such disembodied sovereignties. sov-ereignties. I had seen the man whose is being turned into the coffers of the Kremlin. I can well imagine what happened to the 4-H organizations organiza-tions when the Reds stepped In they are about as closely akin to the Communist youth as the boy scouts were to the Hitler jugend. But if we are to believe all we hear, Latvia is resisting communization. Only this week I received a copy of the Baltic Review, printed in Sweden. Here is one paragraph: "With the coming scholastic year war games will be introduced as an obligatory subject in the schools of all the constituent Soviet republics, writes 'Cina.' the organ of the Communist party in Latvia. The paper goes on to say that the international situation demands that children be taught the art of war as early as possible. Military discipline should be instilled in them even before they come to school. Their toys should be model tanks and planes and so-calld children's 'mechanos' or building boxes should consist of parts whereof these objects can be constructed. con-structed. The author relates about his trip to Russia to study Soviet education and military training and remarks that in this respect the 1 Baltic republics are very backward as yet. Pupils of seven and eight in the schools of Moscow had displayed dis-played quite surprising knowledge as regards military matters. Ten year olds had been experts with the rifles and girls had been as competent as boys. Even tiny tots four and five had known the rudiments rudi-ments of military drill. How useful this proficiency may be in a guerilla gueril-la war. exclaims the author." What is going to happen to the next generation in the U. S. S. R. itself and in the countries dominated by her? Listen to this further extract from the Baltic Review: Communists' Ideas About Education "Every Soviet school manual, every work of fiction for children and young people, every periodical for the rising generation is a manifestation man-ifestation of a war-like spirit worthy of the Huns of old. Innumerable Innu-merable are the glorifications in them of all sorts of heroic exploits of Soviet people during World War II., to enter a military school is represented as the highest aim of every Soviet boy and 80 per cent of the pictures show guns, tanks, infantry or cavalry exercises. Picture Pic-ture books for tiny tots exhibit children playing with rifles, tanks and grenades, every game taught to the young has a military purpose. pur-pose. The little bit of space that is left over from these aggressive and memory ine multicolored multi-colored window had stirred for the first time when he was descending a stairway with just such a window behind him. He was Alfred Bil-manis Bil-manis and he died in July of this year. He was the minister of the republic of Latvia which had "died" eight years ago but according to the state department was and is of t such corporeal quality that, along with its sister republics of Lithuania Lithu-ania and Estonia, it still possesses diplomatic representatives who are recognized on equal terms with those of living nations. It was In August of 1940 that the Red army marched into the Baltic states and they became by force majeure, territorially a part of the 17. S. S. R. But the three little democracies were prepared politically, if not diplomatically. A month or so earlier, by due process of parliamentary parlia-mentary law, a decree was promulgated pro-mulgated which made the Latvian minister to London chief of the Latvian state if the Russians took over her territory. Today Charles Zarena, minister to Britain, remains re-mains the head of the diplomatic corps of the republic of Latvia. Bilmanis continued to serve his ghost-government in the United States after the Russian seizure. Up to then he had helped to keep th bonds firm between us and his little country whose people reached the shores of the Baltic back in the early days of European history, along with the only two other remaining re-maining groups which are at' least liguistically, if not ethically, related re-lated to the Latts: the Finns and the Magyars. , The last president of the free republic of Latvia, Carl Ulmanis was American trained. He lived in Nebraska where he waited in exile and worked for his country's independence. inde-pendence. He studied agriculture agricul-ture and when he returned to Latvia in that hopeful heydey of Europe's new republics after World War I, he carried back . Ideas. One of them was the 4-H clubs. Latvia was 60 per cent agricultural agricul-tural and among its population of only two million, the 4-H movement grew, adapted of course to its new environment, to 40,000 when I heard of it last before the iron curtain cur-tain descended. There were interchanges of visits between the countries and, whenever when-ever the big 4-H encampment took place in Washington, the little Latvian Lat-vian legation echoed to the cheerful cheer-ful chatter of American children who drank lemonade and heard the big, smiling man with the expressive expres-sive ruddy hands, tell of his country coun-try and show pictures of the children chil-dren there at work on their projects proj-ects or going through their folk dances in the gay costumes of their land. The American kids looked at the paintings that covered the . walls for Bilmanis was quite a collector. They were allowed gingerly to try the great chair which Napoleon had taken back to France from Moscow, examine ex-amine the delightful little ivories, ivor-ies, the china and the other I objets d'art which filled the j legation. And then, one by one, they tripped up the stairs to look at the life-size model of the Latvian girl in the traditional robes of the country, wearing the symbolic necklace made of great discs of amber. Amber had been a Latvian article of export since the earliest traders from the Mediterranean made their way to this northern land, for it was a much admired ornament for the ladies of ancient ; Rome and Greece. A good neck- j lace was supposed to be worth an j Arabian mount. j If there is any amber being col- i lected on Latvian beaches today it j ALFRED BILMANIS . . . ghost of a nation . . . bellicose writings is used to extol the merits of the Communist party and its leaders, Lenin and Stalin. All this literary production exudes such a hate for the whole world, for the bourgeoise, imperialism and capital, that the books of the Hitler jugend seem mild nursery rhymes in comparison." That is not the kind of a state of which Alfred Bilmanis dreamed. He hoped one day to return with his valuable possessions pos-sessions and build a museum In his own restored country. Though he continued to serve as minister, his funds ran low and he had to part with many of his things However, he did save some of the paintings, Napoleon's chair and the lady and her beads. Perhaps someday others may realize his dream some happy day when freedom in Europe is returned and the ghost republics of the Baltic become real once more for the people who inhabit them. |